Romantic Suspense Countdown by Lynette Eason

A stalker who wants to finish what he started. A US Marshal who’s vowed to protect his charge. And one woman who is determined to put the past in the past.

Flight paramedic Raina Price has been running so long it’s hard to stop. To escape a dangerous stalker, she changed her name and disappeared, building a new life with the help of a friend from her time in juvie. It feels good to put her energies into saving people’s lives, but because her stalker was never found, she’s never stopped looking over her shoulder. And one can only run so far before the past finally catches up.

US Marshal Vincent Corelli’s job is to hunt down fugitives and protect those who are assigned to him. When Raina is almost killed right in front of him, he vows to protect her at all costs—whether it’s his job or not. Together they work to solve the mystery of Raina’s past. But someone is out to make sure Raina doesn’t live long enough to do it.

Countdown is the breathless conclusion to USA Today bestselling author Lynette Eason’s thrilling Extreme Measures series.

Lynette Eason recently spent some time with The Big Thrill discussing her latest thriller, COUNTDOWN.

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?
There’s no one moment or incident. The idea for this book came from throwing out ideas at friends and a buddy who’s an FBI agent. She threw ideas back at me, as did the friends, and bit by bit, piece by piece, the story came together. But there was also a little more involved and I go into more detail about that below.

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?
My timeline looks a little different than this. I plot and write a book in about five months then spend the last month before it’s due, editing, etc. I turn a book in every six months. As for how I knew this was the book, it was just what came together when we brainstormed it.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?
Raina Price is a chopper medic. I have so much respect for those who work in that field and I wanted to do justice to the profession. While I was writing Life Flight, the first book in the series, I found out my cousin’s husband is flight nurse. Keep in mind, I don’t talk to this cousin much. I’m in SC, she’s in TX and our grandmother was the glue that held us all together. She passed away in February of 2008 and since then, communication has kind of fallen off except for the occasional Facebook post and comment. Anyway, she saw my post asking for a source and volunteered her husband.

Fast forward to May of 2021. My Uncle Mark loved helicopters and wanted to be a door gunner and go to Vietnam. He trained and worked hard and while he never made it ‘Nam as a door gunner for various reasons, he never lost his love of helicopters. In his later years, he was diagnosed with MS. MS is such a horrible disease and rather than “become a burden” (his thoughts, not anyone else’s, I assure you) to those he loved, he shot himself in the head on May 17th, 2021. When paramedics arrived, against all odds, he was still alive. My cousin’s husband, Michael, the flight nurse, got the call to life flight him to a trauma hospital. Michael was given the option to decline the call when he found out who the patient was and the fact that our uncle wasn’t expected to survive the flight, but like the hero he is, Michael said, “No way. I’m going to be a part of his last ride. If he dies in flight, that would be the way he’d want to go.” He didn’t die in flight. Uncle Mark made it to the hospital and passed away a few hours later, but Michael made sure our uncle’s last ride was done with dignity and compassion. Those are the kind of heroes I want to portray in my stories, and I hope that I’ve managed to do that in Countdown.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?
I’m working on the new series that will start releasing in January of 2024.

Lynette Eason is the USA Today bestselling author of Life Flight, Crossfire, and Critical Threat, as well as the Danger Never Sleeps, Blue Justice, Women of Justice, Deadly Reunions, Hidden Identity, and Elite Guardians series. She is the winner of three ACFW Carol Awards, the Selah Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award, among others. She is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and has a master’s degree in education from Converse College. Eason lives in South Carolina with her husband. They have two adult children. Learn more at www.lynetteeason.com.